Mass
Communication: Political Culture and Democracy
Observations and Experiences in a Comparative Perspective

Thomas Meyer

Mass Media shape the Political Culture

In all times it has been obvious that
communication is one of the crucial constituents of political
life. Some, like the famous German-American Political Scientist
Karl W. Deutsche, have even said that politics is nothing
but communication. And it is also obvious that incumbents
of all different political systems have been well aware
of that most of the time. The open question however always
has been, what specific function has communication had to
fulfill. And in that connection: In what direction was it
running- top-down only, in the society itself at the grassroots,
bottom-up or more or less symmetrically both ways? Needless
to say, these are the very issues even today when it comes
to the discussion of the the of mass media in a democracy
and for the furtherance of its political culture.

It is self-evident that democracy, usually
defined as government by consent, is crucially dependent
on a sufficient degree of two-way communication and horizontal
communication at the grassroots, otherwise their cannot
be consensus building and responsiveness. So, democracy,
even in its most modest and reductionism concepts- such
as the economic theory of elite competition, requires a
free public sphere with a free mass media and certain effective
channels for two-way communication, bottom-up and top-down
and, what is even more important, open and active deliberations
of all issues of public concern. Without this there cannot
be democracy worth its name.

In the present era of mass media communication,
the old questions are still the key to understanding the
contribution of communication to the performance of the
political system and its political culture. Mass media,
such as newspapers, radio and television do have the potential
of including practically everybody into the political public
sphere and the process of political deliberation, will formation
and decision making. But, whether they succeed in materializing
this historically new potential or not depends on a variety
of conditions which by no means are fulfilled automatically
once modern mass media come into existence. Print media,
Radio and television can cause depoliticization of the rank
and file or contribute to its enlightenment and appropriate
information, they can serve the sheer interests of political
power or that of the population and the public good. Information
alone can be quite a mixed blessing.

Therefore, a large and crucial portion
of the responsibility for both the construction and nutrition
of a democratic political culture and even for the long-term
performance of governance rests with the media system and
its actors. And this is all the more so in the modern media-society
as it is here that the media is mainly and sometimes almost
the only constituent that can give meaning and structure
to the society's public sphere. Whatever the fruitful contribution
of other factors for a of public deliberation, such as civil
society, may be in the overall public sphere of modern societies,
the responsibility of addressing the supreme decision making
bodies and the entire society invariably rests within the
reach of the mass media. In this sense, they beat the ultimate
responsibility for a quality of public discourse that is
democratically adequate.

In present day media democracies, the
mass media are a crucial part of their respective political
culture contributing substantially to shape the rest of
it. For the media to be capable of rising to this challenge,
two hard and a whole bunch of soil conditions have to materialize.
The most obvious of the hard conditions which normally goes
undisputed is of course the legal guarantee for a free media
and free flow of information to exist. An effective legal
framework, which gives sufficient protection to the media
system and its actors is one of the necessary conditions
for a democratic public sphere. Such a legal protection
is, as we all know, still far from being even in the post-totalitarian
world of today. And, in some countries where the lake appearance
of an independent media is stage-managed it is often dangerous
to be a responsible journalist.

Hard Conditions for Democratic Communication

As I understand, in this country, a headway
has been made in the right transformation of 1990. With
this, one of the necessary (hard) conditions for democratic
communication is being met. But institutional freedom of
communication is not yet a sufficient condition for it's
appropriate democratic performance. Even formally free media
can create a particular type of a representative public
sphere which is not much more than a stage on which personal
power parades its glory.

The second hard condition to be met lies
with the decision-making power over the means of mass communication
which normally but not in all cases is connected with the
ownership of the different mass media units. This connection,
however, is neither direct nor unequivocal. Widespread misunderstanding
dominates the discussion.

There are roughly four models of decision-making
power connected with the two principal forms of ownership.

a. Public ownership combined with public
control over the relevant decisions concerning the performance
of the respective media unit. (Not the government, but civil
society organization exercise effective control over media
units).

b. Public ownership combined with government
control.

c. Private ownership with decision making
at the owners' discretion.

d. Private ownership with decision making
in a legal framework or a strong cultural tradition concerning
professional rights for journalists, quality standards and
the like.

Obviously, some combination of models
A and D is required to meet the second hard condition for
a public discourse of democratic quality. Many countries
today represent one or another type of blend between the
different models. In India e.g. there is free press and
up till now a government controlled TV. In Germany, you
find both public-ally and privately controlled TV and Radio
plus private print-media under certain public restrictions
for private control. I do not want to discuss the various
models in theory and practice here. My own preference however
is clear: public control for the bulk of TV and Radio units
plus a strong legal and cultural framework to protect the
professional freedom of journalists in private print media
and broadcast units.

Soft conditions for democratic communication

But even when such a useful model is effective,
still certain crucial soft conditions have to be fulfilled
for a media system to meet the challenges of democratic
communication and democratic culture. As they are often
neglected in public discussion I would like to focus my
considerations on these additional conditions. They are
intrinsically related to the basic structures and functional
laws of mass media performance as such and not to the forms
of ownership and control alone.

Let me just mention some of the most, crucial ones:

1. Mass media are intrinsically asymmetrical.
The access to their functions is very unequal. Some social
and political actors do have direct access, others have
at least indirect, sometimes even powerful, access and some
social actors have no access whatever.

2. Mass media do have the power to set,
to build and to shape the political agenda of a polity.
Whether political issues at stake in the real political
arena and the daily life of society are represented or not
in the picture of political life as construed by the media
is highly dependent on the media actors who in this respect
function as very effective gatekeepers.

3. The agenda structuring function also
lies with the media actors as it is up to their discretion
whether certain issues rank high or low, are dealt with
extensively or in a volatile manner only.

4. But what in the long run may be even
more relevant in its effects for building political culture
is the way in which the media shape the portrait of the
processes and the logic of politics in the political area
which is enshrined in the reports they give and in the news
they construe.

To cut a complex matter short, I would
like to point out some of the most widespread mistakes that
are usually made concerning these soft conditions, some
of which are most detrimental for an appropriate democratic
culture of communication.

Before going into some detail I have however
to locate the function of' the mass media system as such
in the framework of the entire society. What is the functional
role the media system has to perform for the society? Whereas
it is the social function of the political system to produce
legitimately binding decisions for the whole society, it
is the function of the media system to draw the attention
of the largest possible part of the society for common issues
and by way of that to contribute to the self-perception
and integration of a given society.

In order to perform this particular function
the media system, of course, cannot follow the same rules
of selection, processing and presenting the relevant information
as e.g. the educational system or the scientific system.
The underlying basic law of the media system is to deal
with information in such ways as to maximize attention,
however under certain restrictive conditions such as correctness
of information, respecting personal, public and private
rights and abiding by basic ethical, moral and political
standards.

Within the very wide framework constituted by these factors
and criteria, media units and media actors are free to construe
their picture of political life which under no conditions
every can be just the one and only truthful copy of reality.
It is invariably a particular construction of reality competing
with many other such constructions. Such adequate media
constructions are necessarily built through a process of
intensive selection and artful presentation. Professionally,
in journalism above all, it means competence in the handling
of the twin sets of rules of selection and presentation
in an appropriate manner. To say it before everything else:

A journalist who desires to audio-educate
people just to enlighten, without catching their attention
in curiosity, would almost automatically obstruct his very
intention to the same degree to which he would abstain from
implementing the rules of selection and presentation which
are meant to attract attention and which characterize journalistic
professionalism.

But in their turn it is also these very
same rules which will hamper his efforts for enlightenment
if used excessively and without severe controls regarding
issues and contexts. Media work means: to attract, to amuse,
to entertain and to inform, to explain and may be even to
enlighten. Media work is an effort to create accountable
forms of synthesis between all these factors.

The immanent tensions between the rules
and criteria of successful media presentation of political
life entail that the media are amongst the most crucial
factors, if they are not the single most and crucial factor
which either can contribute positively to the building of
a political culture or impede it from emerging and growing.

Traps and Fallacies

What if both the hard conditions for free
media are met with some dangerous traps for inappropriate
performance of media actors along the lines of the soft
conditions which is looming large? In some of the most advanced
media democracies of the world of today these traps have
successfully caught large parts of media performance and,
by way of that, impaired their political Culture.

Let me mention just the most frequent
ones.

I. There is above all the fallacy of over-personalization,
particularly with respect to political celebrities and incumbents.
The fallacy is committed when politics is depicted mainly
as an activity of some most prominent political actors.
Whatever these actors do is reported as politics.

This fallacy suggests itself. Because, at the same time
it pleases the mighty and the most prominent figures of
the society and caters to the need of large parts of the
audience to indulge in a simple, entertaining and fascinating
spectacle. In quite a superficial manner, it seems to serve
the interests of both sides of the respective media: its
consumers because they get a well digestible meal and the
mighty which eventually can exercise control over the media
and its personnel. However, even in a most autocratic system,
politics is always much more than what some of its star
actors perform. The dominance of this fallacy in a media
system leads to the creation of the representative (feudalistic,
pre-democratic) type of public sphere- fascinating power
parades.

2. There is also another fallacy closely
connected with the first one, the fallacy of just transporting
stage-managed symbolical politics to the audience without
making clear what it is by its very nature. Politics invariably
has two internally linked dimensions: the instrumental function
of problem resolution through policies: for instance, a
new school in a village. And, also, it always has the symbolical
function of expressing certain meanings and giving sense
to an action in a wider socio-political context; for instance,
the prime minister coming to that village in order to inaugurate
that newly-built school at a public function. However in
the world of today, particularly under the influence of
mass media (TV), we observe an increasing propensity of
political leaders to disconnect the symbolical dimension
from the instrumental dimension in most artfully state-managed
ways, in many cases, smartly scripted with a well advised
view to the media an their rules of functioning. In our
case, the prime minister going to that village, richly garlanded,
entering a most inappropriate old school and playing, actor-like,
the role of a politician highly interested in the progress
of the educational systems without delivering anything real.

At least 80 per cent of the media reported
activities of Ronald Reagan nave been performed along these
lines. In many cases, the placebo character of such symbolical
actions is not at all obvious. It is the obligation of quality
media not only to mirror the surface of such on-stage activities
but also to make transparent their context and background
so that its clients get the full and the real information.

To the degree in which this fallacy is
committed and the stage of the media politics proper will
be replaced by a misleading spectacle, which is highly disconnected
from the realties of the country. (In Germany, an interesting
and promising discussion about these concerns has just begun
in the quality media)

3. There is the fallacy of following the
agenda of the incumbents instead of that of the society.
Media actors of necessity are gatekeepers. It is only for
them to take the decisions about their own agenda: what
will be in their paper or broadcast and what not. Which
issues, persons, problems, ideas, interests, organizations
and groups matter and deserve broad attention, urgency or
prominence and which don't. Even in very free and professional
media systems, there is always a strong propensity of the
media to focus on the incumbent, their performance, and
the issues they forward, the problems they take serious,
and the groups and interest they refer to.

The more modern political communication
is shaped and materialized through mass media, the more
it becomes true that reality is only what they show it to
be. What is not in the media is no! real. To a high degree,
therefore, the agenda setting power of' the medic, is' a
political decision making power because it defines what
can become a matter of political concern and what not. Subsequently,
it is one of the most crucial challenges for the media in
a democratic society to build its agenda- the line of interest,
problems ideas, hopes amid experiences of the people and
the civil society even when they are not delivered and presented
in an artful manner on glorious public stages so that the
media can swallow and digest them comfortably. The media,
which follow the agenda of the power structure, will mainly
serve as an echo of the interests and intentions of the
powerful.

4. There is the fallacy of depicting politics
in an apolitical manner. In a rather exaggerated but interesting
way, this fallacy has been analyzed and castigated by the
US media ecologist Neil Postman. According to him, under
the predominance of TV-adapted political information strategies,
we are about to amuse ourselves to death. That means the
life and the processes of politics in the mass media of
today, more often than not, is depicted along the lines
of drama, amusement, personality clashes, personal charisma,
etc. to such a degree that it creates an absolutely distorted
picture of what is really going on in politics and leads
large portions of the public astray.

Politics in its very substance is a time
consuming process in which a broad variety of actors pursue
interests and value-based policies using particular resources,
refer to public ideals for legitimization, acting in a given
institutional and cultural framework. It is invariably not
an instant matter but a long term process, with goal attainment
or failure through conflict, compromise or consensus and
more often that not a mixture of all of them.

These factors and their particular patterns of interaction
must become visible and discernable in the media's picture
of the political world if it wants to meet its democratic
responsibilities.

It is the objective of professionalism
in journalistic work, at first, to select, to condense,
recompose and, secondly, to arrange, stage and give attractive
presentational form to political events and topics, but
done in such ways that the structure of the what is at stake
and where the proper gates and levers for intervention are
located. This is no easy art, because the twin traps of
either depoliticizing by misusing extensively media forms
of presentation of by alienating the audience through instruction
methods are always lurking nearby.

Responsibilities

The temptation of going the easy ways
of either pseudo political entertainment or pseudo communicative
political instruction is increased and sometimes overwhelming
when one or more or the following three conditions prevail
in the contest of journalistic work:

This is why all those responsible for
journalistic work, the individual journalists, the journalists'
federations, those in charge of the education and training
programs for young journalists and those who exercise power
over their working conditions and the ways they are made
use of have to contribute to favorable conditions for the
mass media to perform in such ways as to help democratic
political culture to grow.

Because of their wide reach, mass media
can contribute immensely to public information and political
culture. In a society where literacy rate is still low,
it is nonetheless not only radio and TV which provide the
rank and file with information and models of understanding
and meaning but the print media as well. We know very well
from empirical research carried out by the IIMC, each single
person in a village that can read a newspaper will spread
the news and the schemes of interpretation in a multi-step
flow to the rest of the population -- provided that the
print media are such that at least one of the villagers
would he able and like to read it

Media which obey the rules that can lead
to the optimization oft their reach and at the same time
carefully mediate politics in an adequate manner and avoid
the key fallacies will contribute most substantially to
the political culture of democracy both by educating the
incumbents and by enlightening the rank and file.

Media which are trapped by the usual fallacies
of depoliticizing politics by the way they depict it and
build their agenda thus will probably abandon their responsibility
blaming everything on the deterioration of' the political
culture of their polity.

The hard conditions for democratic media
communication are necessary but only when the soft factors
are also catered for. Thus all 'the sufficient conditions
for an appropriate democratic communication are fulfilled.
Only then mass media will contribute to the building and
development of a democratic political culture that deserves
its name.

And, this is why the responsibility of
the actors of the media system is so extremely great.